Create an attractive employer…

A unifying concept around attract, motivate, and retaining your staff is employer branding. It has both an external and an internal focus – attracting new talents and at the same time as maintaining and developing the ones you already have. The last ten years, employer branding has become an increasingly common concept. The concept was created in the early 1990s but it’s only now that we get to see how it is being used in practice and what effect it has.

To be able to make it work first you need to have a business culture that is worth communicating. One needs to be concerned about their employees and regularly follow up on how the organization is doing. The importance of employee surveys is not the actual result; rather, it’s what you do with it. If any eventual problems are caught in time, a relationship develops towards the employees and one creates a basis for an ambassadorship. In industries where there is shortage of expertise, or where competition is high, it becomes even more important to be able to attract and maintain the best.

Previously, employer branding worked behind the curtains, for example in classic job searching forums like Linkedin. Now instead we can see how this phenomenon has taken the step towards the large crowd. In the beginning of the year we could take part of Vovlos commercial “Made by people”. Earlier they had been using different famous profiles like Zlatan and Börje Salming to advertise their cars. Now, they have instead shifted their focus towards employees, Åsa Borg, Market Manager at Volvo Cars Europe Organization, said Febuary 26,2016 in the newspaper Resumé: “We’ve had a few though year behind us in the Swedish car industry, but thanks to our 30.000 employees that works for us every day, we had an amazing 2015. We want to pay tribute to them.”

In the commercial we get to follow Volvos employees during an ordinary workday. The feeling is that this is a company that knows their employees on a personal level, despite their enormous size. They manage to make us want to be a part of the brand, both as consumers and as employees. It is precisely here that one finds the strength in this open form of employer branding. In the best of worlds, a customer that is an ambassador for the company becomes an employee.

How do you work with employer branding? When were the last time you talked with your employees?

Below are three films on the theme. The first two, I like a lot… the last one might be some divided thoughts on what it actually does…or what do you think?

Volvos commercial:

Published 2016-02-27 15:01:00 in http://www.bjornhag.se